


Tragedy of the Commons

by paulatheprokaryote



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe, BAMF Hermione Granger, Dystopian, F/M, Manipulative Tom Riddle, Politics, Powerful Hermione, Really AU, Violence, Wizengamot, but you've read weirder, grey tom riddle, look i know this is a bit weird
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 18:58:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13301172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paulatheprokaryote/pseuds/paulatheprokaryote
Summary: Hermione Granger has finally brokered a peace treaty that would end the war between magical and muggle society. Along the way, she's made enemies on both sides. When the legislation is finally about to passed, she goes missing. Tom Riddle is the one to find her and he's determined figure out exactly what happened to her.





	Tragedy of the Commons

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: If this story seems weird and things like the Wizengamot don't quite fit what you'd expect it's because this isn't actually a fanfic. I'm writing an original fic that's set in a neo-Roman dystopian society and I've hit a wall and can't type anymore. So I decided to convert it to fanfic until I finish it and Tomione seemed to fit best. This is craaaazy AU so if that isn't your vibe, I don't recommend this story. Characters that are good or evil won't fit neatly into those categories, the Wizengamot is an odd mixture of Death Eaters and Order members working together, and era dividers aren't here at all. That being said if you're still around and you have things you love or hate I'd definitely appreciate feedback for my actual OF. Sorry if there are any random Roman things still about. I did my best to change things, but I might have missed something.

Tom Riddle jerked his entire body forward and rubbed in the back of his aching skull tenderly where it had made unforgiving contact with the concrete windowsill behind him when his neck gave out on his sleepy, lolling head. 

Abraxas shot him an amused look as Rosier smirked knowingly. 

He’d been hungover all day despite the four green potions he’d slugged that morning and the disgusting brine that was supposed to magic away his body’s punishment for maltreatment. It wasn’t his fault he’d fallen asleep during the meeting just like it wasn’t his fault that Dumbledore had such a monotone voice or that he droned on for nearly an hour on shit that could have been covered in a three sentence memo. 

_The Muggles are being pissy._

_The Mudblood that’s been all over the Daily Prophet for the past year is missing._

_Her law is being voted by the Wizengamot this week._

Chances were the girl would be found in some run down alley fucking some muggle she met like a good little mudblood and breeding filthy little squibs that would grow to be little more than dragonpox reservoirs that she’d surely want the Purebloods and the Half-bloods to fund for life while she and her muggle ended up strung out on potions and being fed and cared for while stuck in Azkaban. _On the Purebloods’ and Half-bloods’ coin too, no doubt_. 

He groaned as another wave of nausea ascended his stomach and filled his esophagus. He swallowed the bile back down with a pained grimace. _One more meeting_. All he had to do was survive Lestrange’s father rambling on about the peace bill for another half hour and he could go crash on his couch and properly nurse his hangover. Maybe check and see if his father’s secretary had messaged him a belated birthday greeting that he clearly forgot to schedule yesterday. He groaned again at the queasiness that assaulted him when he remembered the moldy smell of the dungeon conference room. He wanted to crucio Abraxas for setting off the fire alarm upstairs and causing this stupid meeting to be in the stupid dungeon.

“In short, if you hear _anything_ , I mean anything, on her whereabouts, please inform us immediately. I know you all have sources outside of this room. We don’t think she’s missing on her own accord and she’s crucial to peace,” Dumbledore gave a somber look to each member of the incoming Wizengamot, Tom included, before dismissing them for their final meeting of the day. 

“Twenty galleons says she’s already dead. I heard some Aurors talking about what they’d do to her when they found her,” Abraxas intimated on their way to the last meeting today with a vulgar gesture as they filed out dead last. The older Wizengamot members had very little interest in spending unnecessary time with the youngest members which afforded them a bit of privacy.

“At least she’d wish she was dead,” grunted Rosier with a shiver. 

Tom frowned and nodded along. He’d heard the same whispers, but chalked them up to loud mouth Aurors with a hard on for their ‘defense’ spells and intense hatred for legislation that was above their pay grade. 

“Cygnus's daughter is arriving at quarter til and staying in his Ministry suite for the weekend. Wanna skip old Otho’s lecture and see if her legs are as long as I remember?” Rosier cocked his head at the other two men with curled lips. 

Abraxas agreed fastidiously, but Tom sighed. 

“I can’t miss anymore this week.”

“Say no more. The old man is on your ass again?” Abraxas asked with false interest.

“Unfortunately.” 

“Poor luck. Until tomorrow then,” Abraxas flashed him a wink before escorting Rosier upstairs. 

Tom hadn’t really considered that his Monday afternoon would be any more interesting than his typical four meetings that were full of nothing but lectures and squabbles over taxes until he saw the gangly form of a small, relatively undressed woman directly in front of him dashing down the hall. 

_This was the Ministry, for Merlin’s sake!_

He paused, blinking rapidly and swivelled his head to see if anyone else saw her. He realized quickly that no one else was there. Abraxas and Rosier had already dipped out to try, _and fail_ , to flirt with Cygnus Black’s insane daughter who was just in from her visit to the Durmstrang Institute. Was this some kind of prank on him? They wouldn’t dare. Was he still drunk from the night before? He’d had a bit too much firewhiskey last night at his shitty birthday celebration and his hangover might have actually induced a clean break from reality. He raked a hand through his meticulously coiffed hair and decided to follow her, delusion or not.

The girl had a bushy nest of chestnut colored hair that was matted with blood. She was adorned in what looked a bit like a cut up pillowcase wrapped around her middle with very obvious snags and tears in places that might have made him blush in any other circumstance. He nearly laughed at the thought that she resembled a house-elf until he realized her entire skin was caked in dried coppery gunk and her body was littered in burns, gashes, and cuts. 

She pressed her battered body flatly against the wall and frantically jostled a door handle to one of the offices. She hissed in frustration when she couldn’t get it open and the string of filth from her mouth actually caused color to crawl up his cheeks. It occurred to Tom that perhaps he should do something about the situation. Ask if she needed any help? Call security?

He watched her stagger down the hall, pushing against the walls to propel herself further from him as he approached her cautiously. 

“Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice. He startled her and she let out a little yip in surprise and froze. Her doe eyes frantically searched for an exit around him. 

He glanced back down the hall she had just come from and wondered what the hell had happened. She looked like she’d walked straight out of a war. Her lips, which from afar he might have thought were painted ruby red like the girls wore, were actually coated in blood which was smeared down her chin. Her eyes were covered in dark circles and he could see violet outlines of handprints around her neck. Her left arm was covered in dried blood that looked nearly brown on her milky skin. Someone had definitely tried to kill her. 

She tried to step back from him and lost her footing, sending her to the harsh stone floor. He rushed to her side, but she scrambled away from him on her hands. He grabbed her ankle to try to hold her still because _by the gods_ she needed some kind of medical attention when her dark eyes flashed dangerously to his and suddenly he wished someone else was here to deal with her. 

She froze like a deer who’d been shot in the heart and then she began thrashing wildly. She flung a fist in his direction which connected with his nose with a sickening crack. He tented his hands around the nose which was gushing blood and let out a howl of pain. She clambered to her feet and began limping down the hallway again toward the infirmary. He couldn’t help but hope she was going there because she really, really needed a healer. 

She twisted back to look at him and flung a hand out again, this time paired with a pair of spells slipping from her lips. She’d successfully disarmed him and sent his wand flying toward her and then he’d only barely dodged a strong confundus charm. He blinked a moment, stunned at her wandless magic, and swore under his breath, trying to swallow some of the blood draining down his throat before chasing after her. 

“What the hell happened to you?” He called to an empty hallway. 

When he caught up with her, he was startled to realize he wasn’t the only one there. She had made a complete mess of the medicine cabinets and was waving a scalpel wildly at a very frightened healer’s throat who she held rigidly against herself as she tugged on the corked lid of a small vial. 

She gave a cry of triumph as she pulled the lid off the vial, amber with the label scribbled off, and her hands shook violently as she took a deep swig. He dashed forward to catch her wrist, but he was too late. She gave him a smirk and raised her chin defiantly and he realized exactly how striking she was. He snatched the scalpel from the healer's throat and flung it across the room. The healer immediately ducked under his hold on her wrist and scrambled out the infirmary. 

Out of nowhere, a stampede of men dressed in black and armed with drawn wands were clawing for her and screaming at her. One of the Aurors whipped out his wand and cursed her repeatedly while demanding she spit whatever it was that she had in her mouth back out. Tom was pretty sure she had already swallowed it though and even if she hadn’t, it couldn’t be easy to do anything that required motor skills with those kinds of hexes coursing through her.

Every lash of the wand was met with the burning stench of flesh, something he definitely wasn’t accustomed to, and she screamed out in pain. He flinched and tried to find his voice. What the hell was going on? _This was the Ministry, by the gods!_

“Loose lips sink ships,” she said in a breathy, other-worldly voice in between strikes and screams.

“Was that a Draught of Living Death? Goddamnit, that was a Draught of Living Death!” 

One of the men, clearly the leader of this particular cohort of Aurors, rounded on him with a screwed up, angry expression and he was about to demand the question again, he was sure of it, before the man recognized him. 

“Mr. Riddle, sorry for the inconvenience.” The man immediately apologized and then the girl in his bruising grip, who was blinking rapidly as she struggled to stay alert, suddenly collapsed as her head rolled back at an unnatural angle.

“Can you explain to me what exactly this _girl_ has done to have a small army of Aurors chasing after her?” Tom demanded. 

“She’s an undesirable.” The man spat with venomous disdain.

“An undesirable? She’s just a girl!” He asked doubtfully. 

“She’s one of the most dangerous undesirables there are.” The man argued as the rest of the Aurors began jostling her unconscious body. 

They gathered her up and looped both of her arms around the shoulders of the two nearest men. He blinked a few times again, wondering if any of that really happened or if he was in the middle of a meeting nap nightmare. He followed them away from the infirmary, trailing once again behind her. Her slumping body looked disconcerting when surrounded by so many men and he wanted to do something, anything, but he didn’t know what he wanted to do. He couldn’t dismiss the nagging sense something wasn’t quite right.

Then he saw it. A metallic triangle with a circle and a line in the middle of it dangling from a chain that had been twisted to her back in the skirmish. The deathly hallows.

“Tell me that isn’t who I think it is!” Tom suddenly demanded, causing the Auror he’d spoken to earlier to freeze. The man slowly turned to face him, his face cautiously guarded. 

“Who authorized this?” Tom growled. 

“Sir, some things have to be done for the greater good,” the man explained slowly. 

“For the greater good? The Wizengamot is voting on her policy this very week!” Tom hissed in fury. The man stayed silent. 

“What is your name?” he demanded. The man was lucky the witch had disarmed him or else he’d have casted an Unforgivable by now.

“Thorfinn Rowle, sir,” he spat the words like venom.

“Thorfinn Rowle, if I see your face again–if you try to circumvent the law again–you’ll answer to me. I’ll send you straight to Azkaban, do you understand? I’ll send you a summons tomorrow morning.” He stood taller and for a moment the rage that passed on the man’s face was so severe he seemed to consider using his wand on him, rank be damned. 

“She’s a mudblood. She’s trying to destroy our way of life,” Thorfinn tried again. 

“I don’t want to hear it. Get yourself elected to Wizengamot and then we can talk policy. You two, bring her with me. You, there, go find a healer. Preferably not the one she tried to kill. I have so much fucking damage control to do now.” Tom pressed his fingers to his temple and exhaled before leading the two hesitant men carrying the girl back down the hall he had originally come from and toward the elevator. He paused only a moment to pick up his wand. He pressed the glowing ‘XVI’ button, waited for the ding, and lead them to his office suite. Because members of the Wizengamot also spent late hours working on policy and reviewing bills, each member is allotted quarters to stay in on the premises. While said quarters were mainly used to house mistresses and mask affairs, some members actually stayed in them. Tom was one such member.

He ushered the girl and the two Aurors into his suite and glanced around trying to decide where to put her. The couch was small, but then again so was she, so they dumped her onto it a bit too unceremoniously for his taste. He wordlessly dismissed the Aurors. 

He glanced down at the girl. _Hermione Granger_. The Wizengamot was so fucked. Completely and totally fucked. Once the Muggles found out what happened to her. Once she recovered. He shuddered at the thought. The girl had been missing for days, was the most important political figure of the time, and then she just showed up covered in blood and bruises in the middle of the _goddamn_ Ministry? What had they done to her? 

He glanced at her one last time before pacing to the bathroom. He examined with a sort of sickening fascination all of the blood on his own face that had started to dry into a tacky sort of copper. His nose was swollen and looked just a bit _off_. His fingers traced the bridge lightly and he cringed at the pain. A steady stream of blood droplets were dripping out of his nostril and splatting on the hammered bronze sink. 

The house-elf that cleaned his suite tomorrow would be horrified, that’s for certain. He turned on the faucet and tried to rinse the blood down the drain. He watched, mesmerized, as the copper mixed with the water and swirled down the drain. 

Merlin, he was going to be sick. He turned quickly to heave over the toilet, but the bile was also pink with his blood. He flushed it and rinsed his mouth out. The sour taste of bile and the coppery taste of blood remained all the same. He wound a few layers of tissue paper around his fingers and held it tightly against the steady droplets as he began casting the healing spells that had been drilled into him at Hogwarts. He’d have done the same for her wounds, but he needed them to be catalogued by a third party first. 

He returned to the living area, pleased that she was still unconscious for the simple fact that he didn’t have to come up with some diplomatic bullshit quite yet, and waited for the healer’s knock at the door.


End file.
